Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 orn in 1838 to foundry owner Asa Holden and his wife Anna, young Edgar Holden carried with him warm memories of a childhood in the Massachusetts shore town of Hingham. Although he would later write short stories and articles about seaside life and marine tragedies, there is no evidence that Holden experienced shipboard life prior to his service in the Union Navy. During Edgar’s teenage years, the Holdens left Massachusetts and joined extended families in Newark.1 In 1856, Holden joined the gentlemen scholars at the College of New Jersey in Princeton as a sophomore, having prepared for his entrance examinations with Presbyterian minister and educator John Pingry (Figure 1).2 If any professor at Princeton influenced Holden in his choice of medicine as a profession, it was John Stilwell Schanck, a practicing physician in Princeton. Schanck taught a range of science courses, including anatomy and physiology, hygiene, natural history, zoology, and chemistry.3 In addition to active participation in undergraduate shenanigans, Holden showed a modest talent as a poet, and contributed regularly to the college’s Nassau Literary Magazine. He also enjoyed a reputation as a sketch artist and amateur musician.4 Flanked by the robust and progressive medical meccas of New York and Philadelphia, 19th century New Jersey medical institutions lagged far behind. There were no medical colleges for aspiring physicians and no prestigious teaching hospitals. So, young Holden chose New York’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, entering in 1859. By the rather dismal standards of mid-19th century American medical education, College of Physicians and Surgeons offered lectures and FIGURE 1 demonstrations taught by a capable and, in some Edgar Holden, student portrait, College cases, outstanding faculty. Classroom study was of New Jersey. supplemented by observation of patient care by faculty Princeton University Archives members in clinics and hospitals, as well as privately arranged preceptorships. The hospital’s clinical lectures in surgery offered students the opportunity to witness operations “of the gravest nature.”5 Following graduation in 1861, Holden took up a post as assistant physician at the hospital of the Kings County Almshouse in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where he could hone his clinical skills (Figure 2, next page). The almshouse and hospital were managed by the Brooklyn Superintendents of

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 the Poor. As the almshouse hospital population grew, such junior house physicians, who resided on the hospital grounds, were hired to assist the resident physician and visiting consultants.6 The house post at Kings County was an opportunity for Holden to gain experience and polish his diagnostic and therapeutic skills. The annual report for the fiscal year ending July 1, 1861, by which time Holden had been at work for several months, noted that the hospital had admitted over two thousand patients during the year.7 Even if he was not intent on pursuing a career in New York, a year or two of post-graduate work at Kings County would put him in a good position to advance quickly in the relatively uncompetitive professional environment of Newark. Whatever Holden’s plans for civilian practice, however, they were abandoned with the fall of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

ESSEX COUNTY PHYSICIANS GO TO WAR With the outbreak of the Civil War, Essex County physicians answered the call. The historian of the Essex District (i.e. County) Medical Society, Dr. J. Henry FIGURE 2 Kings County Almshouse Hospital. Clark, listed twelve member physicians who served in units of Annual Report of the Superintendents of the the New Jersey Volunteers or Army and eight Poor of Kings County, for the Year Ending July 31, 1861 who served in the . Four gave their lives. Young Edward Pierson, member of a Newark medical dynasty, was medical officer of the USS Penobscot, assigned to blockade duty off in May 1862. Pierson had laid out his surgical instruments below decks when a shell from Confederate Fort Fisher hit the cabin. He was struck in the head by a large flying splinter of wood and died within hours. Pierson was 26 years-old when he became Essex County’s “first [medical] martyr to a preserved nationality.” Following active service in the field and an appointment as the last medical director of Newark’s Ward United States Army Hospital, James T. Calhoun died at age 27 of cholera at the military hospital on New York’s Wards Island shorty after the end of the war. Luther G. Thomas, surgeon of a New Jersey volunteer regiment, died of “congestion of the brain.” Joseph Addison Freeman, who had earlier conducted a landmark investigation into mercury poisoning among Essex County hatters, died of fever at age 30 while serving at a military hospital in Nashville.8

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 NAVY SURGEON The Civil War for many young physicians, both Union and Confederate, was a professional baptism by fire. Perhaps Holden’s early childhood near the commercial shipyards of Massachusetts influenced his decision to join the naval medical service. His medical school training and almshouse hospital experience appear to have prepared him well for his shipboard “sick call” and battlefield trauma duties. Since the Civil War Navy was mainly a coastal operation, difficult or complex cases could often be transferred to port facilities or hospital ships. Medical care in the Union Navy was under separate administration from that of the Army. Physicians on individual vessels reported to a fleet surgeon, who reported to the chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, and thence to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. As one historian of naval medicine observed, “a medical officer below decks in a wooden ship [was] not really a noncombatant.”9 “Below decks” is not quite the same thing as “behind the lines.” In early October 1861, the New York Times listed Dr. Edgar Holden among the FIGURE 3 physicians who passed a “rigid but fair” The steam frigate USS Minnesota. examination before the Naval Medical Board convened at the wikipedia.org United States Naval Hospital in Brooklyn.10 A gifted writer, Holden would chronicle his eventful wartime years—both thrilling and terrifying—in two popular national periodicals: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and Century Magazine.

MEDICAL OFFICER AT Holden was 23 years-old on February 25, 1862, and just a year out of medical school, when he took up his post as acting assistant surgeon aboard the steam frigate USS Minnesota (Figure 3) with the Union fleet at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in anticipation of an attack by the Confederate fleet and its rumored secret ironclad behemoth.11 Holden, class poet of his Princeton graduating class, wrote these lines about the coming battle:12

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 The Merrimac & Monitor from the Frigate Minnesota Within the capes of the lower bay In stately grandeur on the ocean’s swell The old line Frigate Minnesota lay Her long spars gleaming in the bright spring day As with monotony sublime she rose and fell.

In the lazy calm comes the Boatswain’s call And the “Second Cutter” is called away A moment more it is “give way all”! But hark! a startling sound on the senses fall The drum long rolling beats “to quarters all”! And swift the scene is changed to war’s array.

Beneath the deck so lately still The rattling blocks and the hurrying feet The creak of hawser and engines’ thrill Perchance with hoarse command a common will And each pulse throbs with a quickening beat.

Then swift a change to silence dread And the gunner’s feet on the sanded deck FIGURE 4 And the sailor’s cry as he heaves the lead Ironclad CSS Merrimack. Strike the high strung nerves with ominous dread wikipedia.org Of the coming slaughter and battle’s wreck.

On the morning of March 8, 1862, the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly the refloated wooden steam frigate USS Merrimack) (Figure 4) and conventional Confederate naval forces wreaked havoc among the Union vessels at Hampton Roads. The Minnesota ran aground and was bombarded by the Confederate fleet. Two Union vessels, Cumberland and Congress, were lost. Recoil from her own heavy guns drove the Minnesota further onto the shoal. Nightfall and a falling tide sent the Virginia and her flotilla into shelter in a Confederate held river for the night. Meanwhile, the USS Monitor was racing south from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Monitor was the prototype of a new class of fighting ship. Structurally, it was little more than two iron hulls and a novel rotating iron turret armed with two eleven-inch Dahlgren guns. The Monitor and her crew survived near disaster on the run to the Chesapeake. Seawater poured in through the ventilation blower pipes, causing the fires to go out and the engines to fail. Engineers and crewmen, suffocating from escaping carbon dioxide gas, were dragged out “more

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 5 Detail from "Scene of the Fight of the dead than alive,” and laid out on the roof of the turret to recover. Iron-Clads" with the Monitor and the The crew fought on through the night, bailing and pumping until Merrimack/Virginia center left and the the seas calmed and the engines could be restarted. Under shoaled three-masted Minnesota to cover of darkness, the strange little ironclad slipped alongside the right. 13 Harper's Weekly, 6: 237 the shoaled Minnesota. The following day (March 9th), Holden was eyewitness to the epic naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia. The outcome has been judged a standoff, but the Minnesota, though damaged by Confederate shelling and still aground, was saved (Figure 5). The critical Union blockade of the Chesapeake held. An Essex County colleague later recalled young Holden’s medical service in the wake of the battle:

[He passed] a large portion of the time, during the two days’ fight, in plying from the frigate [Minnesota] to the other ships engaged, in attending upon the wounded. Upon the close of the engagement, and in the necessary absence of the Fleet Surgeon, he was placed in charge of the wounded from the Congress, Cumberland and Minnesota, and performed, for several weeks, the duties of the Senior Surgeon of the Fleet. He participated in the bombardment of Sewell’s Point, and was then made Surgeon in charge of the Squadron Hospital at Norfolk.14

USS PASSAIC Excited by the events at Hampton Roads, Holden likely became aware that a fleet of Monitor class ironclads was under construction and due for completion near the end of 1862. Officers on these early ships—which doubtless included medical officers—were volunteers. After short service on the steamer Wyandotte, Holden found himself at the recruiting

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 6 USS Passaic officers and crew at station in New York, from which he was ordered to the USS divine services off Charleston; Holden Passaic, the first of the new ironclads, “without delay.”15 was likely one of the heavily bearded The high point of Holden’s naval career, at least in memory officers to Captain Drayton's left. if not the actual harrowing experience, was his service on the Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 59426 Passaic. He reported aboard at New York on October 18, 1862. The captain was Percival Drayton, an experienced naval officer who had overseen the construction of the Passaic. There were fourteen officers, and sixty-five men, including surgeon’s steward Orlando Davis (Figure 6).16 Life aboard the early ironclads was, at best, uncomfortable, and, at worst, intolerable. The cramped quarters, fetid air, dim light, extremes of temperature, constant wetness, and persisting sense of danger wore on officers and crew alike. The vessel itself posed as great a danger as the Confederate Navy.17 Holden’s thoughts turned to his Newark home and his young wife, as evidenced by the skillful and moving pencil drawing, “Dream of Home,” preserved in his diary (Figure 7, next page). Holden’s thrilling shipboard account, “The First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” was published in October 1863 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.18 The Passaic set out from New York on November 26, 1862, towed by a sidewheel steamer (the monitors were unseaworthy on the open seas), and headed for Fortress Monroe at the entrance to the Chesapeake. The hatches, “far from tight, leaked in constant streams.” A gale on the second day threatened the life of the Passaic and her crew:

Every wave broke over our low decks, and, like a huge sea-monster, the ship plunged through them, dripping and leaking in a manner unpleasantly suggestive. . . . We had plunged and plowed along as far as a night’s voyage from the

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 Fortress [Monroe] when we were suddenly startled by a dull report, a shout, and then a rush of men from the engine-room, accompanied by a hissing cloud of steam and smoke. . . . [I heard] the groans of the scalded, and the cries of the terrified struggling to get up the ladder to the deck . . . then a lull and again the cry, “The boilers have burst!” With alacrity the men sprang to the hatches of the fireroom. Swifter than it can be told they tore them off, and one after another was taken out almost stifled, wet, breathless, and exhausted. Fortunately none were found seriously injured. . . . 19

The wind and seas abated, and the Passaic arrived safely at Fortress Monroe. The vessel was towed to Washington naval yard, its damage kept secret.20 Repairs took until Christmas, when it returned to Fortress Monroe without incident. On glimpsing the Monitor near Fortress Monroe, Holden wrote: “The Monitor lay there . . . painted a sombre [sic] black, and looking almost like our own reflection in the water.” From the Monitor, paymaster William Keeler wrote to his wife: “The Passaic is in & lies close by us, the two looking as much alike as possible.”21 We can imagine the two officers—surgeon Holden and paymaster Keeler—gazing at each other across the water from the decks of their respective monitors.

FIGURE 7 OFF THE OUTER BANKS: “THE MONITOR IS GONE” "Dream of Home," Holden's sketch of The Monitor, towed by the steamer Rhode Island, and the his "quarters" on the USS Passaic Passaic, towed by the sidewheel steamer State of Georgia, set from his Civil War Journal; note paired out on Monday, December 29, 1862, at noon, heading south. Dahlgren guns like those in the Their destination may have been Wilmington, North Carolina, in Passaic turret. William B. Birdsall family collection preparation for an ironclad assault on a southern port, although the exact purpose of the mission was unknown to Holden. Historians of the Monitor and its death struggle off the Outer Banks of North Carolina on the night of December 30 rarely (if ever) mention the Passaic, the second monitor fighting for its own life in that selfsame storm. The official log of the Passaic in the National Archives confirms the events, (if not the melodrama) detailed by Holden in his Harper’s article. At sunset the first day out, the wind freshened and the swell increased. After midnight, “ . . . a leak was discovered near the turret in a boat-davit socket and another in the socket of the turret itself [the fit of the rotating turret to the deck was a

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 problem with all the ironclads of this class] . . . the water poured over our decks in larger volumes, the stream grew to fearful size.” By noon on Tuesday, December 30th, the Passaic was off Cape Hatteras, with winds increasing (Figure 8). Toward sunset, the Passaic made out the Monitor (Figure 9, next page) in the distance. A new leak was discovered in the bow of the vessel. “A stream poured in like a miniature cataract, but with the velocity of that of a steam engine, and threatening to give serious trouble.” Both main pumps gave out, and the crew was forced to rely on bilge injection pumps. A signal was sent to the State of Georgia to tow the Passaic into the “nearest lee.” By midnight the gale gained strength and “we began to despair of ever seeing port.” The captain ordered ballast thrown overboard and the crew struggled to jettison tons of shell. FIGURE 8 The Passaic "Off Hatteras" during the A rocket was sent up as a distress signal, and storm that sunk the Monitor; note the informing the State of Georgia that we were tow rope from the USS State of Georgia attached to the bow of the sinking. . . . At intervals the gale would burst with Passaic. redoubled fury, and we would rise high on a Harper's New Monthly Magazine 27: 583 monstrous wave, and then plunge down completely out of sight of our convoy, or come crashing down on the succeeding wave, with a shock that made the ship tremble like an aspen.

All hands were ordered to bail. Officers—including Holden, who had no navigational duties—and men alike “toiled at the work with an energy that could be stimulated only by desperation.” Masses of water rolled over the decks and turret. “Wet through, faint, cold, and despairing, we bailed and bailed, hoping beyond hope.” Despite their efforts, the water rose to within three inches of the fires and the last pumps failed. As the water “swashed and hissed over the glowing grates” and the ship rolled heavily, some of the men sank to the deck in despair; some rushed to the turret “to be, if possible, the last to go down, or to see the open night once more.” As officers drove the men back to work,

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 the pumps began to work, the ship found a more favorable heading, the winds decreased, and the torrential leaks abated. All hands bailed until morning and the State of Georgia and the Passaic sailed on through the day of December 31st. As 1862 turned into 1863, the Passaic was northeast of Cape Lookout and once again in the teeth of the gale. The official log of the Passaic made no mention of a touching ceremony described by Holden for Harper’s magazine:

Even now so desperate was our condition that a bottle, containing a short account of our prospects and the state of affairs, was sealed up, a red flag attached, and the whole trusted to the mercy of the waves, in the hope that if the worst of our fears were realized some one [sic] would find it, and from that account learn how we had gone.

But the Passaic and all hands survived the night and made Beaufort harbor late on New Year’s Day. The harbor pilot came aboard and informed the crew that “the Monitor is gone and all aboard,” news that “fell like a weight upon our hearts.” To their relief, Holden and the Passaic crew soon learned that two-thirds of the Monitor crew had been rescued by daring small boat crews from the Rhode Island. A few days later, the Passaic left port, towed by the Rhode Island (“the ship that lost the Monitor”) through another raging storm. “Hour after hour, for miles, we were hurled along, growing less and less hopeful, and ignorant of our whereabouts. . . . Once we nearly ran on the FIGURE 9 shoals, but where no one knew.” But the sun The ironclad USS Monitor. came out, the Passaic anchored off Hilton Head and made US Naval History & Heritage Command harbor at Port Royal.22 Several months of inshore blockade duty followed, climaxed by the failed bombardment on March 3, 1863 by the Passaic and other monitors, of a Confederate sand fort (Fort McAllister)—a disappointing trial of ironclad performance—in the lead up to a naval assault on Charleston.

THE SURGEON’S LIFE ABOARD THE PASSAIC In all, Holden spent five months on the Passaic. His first official duty was preparing his medical log, now preserved at the National Archives. He embellished the first page with the words “Journal—Ironclad Passaic” in his elegant calligraphy (Figure 10). The medical log kept by Holden during the first

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 month at sea showed that he treated one to four men in sickbay daily. On the night of the gale that claimed the Monitor, Holden recorded four officers and five men sick with diarrhea, but on duty. On January 7, he requested and was granted permission to send the first assistant engineer ashore with diarrhea, “as fires are out & the damp & cold are almost unbearable.” Other crewmembers were treated for bronchitis, scorbutic purpura (scurvy, probably acquired ashore before joining the crew), carbuncle, sore joints, influenza, lacerations and burns, pneumonia, fevers, and “melancholia.” For each man transferred to a hospital ship or shore hospital, Holden prepared a “hospital ticket”—a short summary of the case.23 The sickest man on the Passaic, however, was the surgeon himself. An uncharacteristically lengthy entry in the medical log appeared in Holden’s hand on April 1st, 1863:

Memorand: During the Quarter [i.e. three months] I have myself been constantly under treatment for Dysentery with frequent convalescences & relapses the latter sufficient at times to confine me to bed for one two & three weeks. The end of the Quarter shows no material improvement save in ability to be out of bed for the greater part of each day (under use of Opium).24

IRONCLAD ATTACK ON CHARLESTON HARBOR Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, ordered a fleet of ironclads to take Charleston Harbor, the most heavily defended port of the Confederacy. The Passaic arrived there on April 6th, 1863. In his medical log, Holden called April 7th a “day of action.” Rear Admiral Samuel DuPont was in command. The Union order of battle included seven Passaic class monitors: Weehauken, Passaic, Montauk, Patapsco, Nantucket, Nahant, FIGURE 10 "Journal Iron-Clad Steamer Passaic," and Catskill. The smokestacks of the monitors were painted in medical log of the USS Passaic, with different colors for identification by commanding officers. Two Holden's calligraphy. larger ironclads of novel design, the New Ironsides and the National Archives and Records Administration Keokuk, made up the attacking force.

In every direction there seemed to be nothing but batteries and guns, while Fort Sumter’s walls were crowded with pieces of every description. . . . No one looking from this side the battle [after it was done] can realize the feeling of the participants just on its eve. Slowly we [the ironclads] steamed along in single file, and

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 11 Detail of "Panoramic View of gradually there settled down a solemn hush Charleston Harbor-Advance of the almost death-like. . . . Suddenly like the crash of Ironclads, to the Attack, April 7, 1863." thunder, every [Confederate shore] battery Seven Passaic class monitors in opened, and for a few long moments the roar of battle order: Weehawken, Passaic, Montauk, Patapsco, Catskill, guns the hiss and scream of shells, the quivering Nantucket, Nahant; other ironclads: of the ship, and the tremendous explosions from Ironsides and Keokuk. Fort Sumter our own heavy pieces, drowned the loud voices of (label 6) is just to the port side of the command. . . . In less than half an hour, so furious monitors Weehawken and Passaic was the fire, our turret was temporarily disabled, (labels H and K). Naval History and Heritage Command, the top of the pilot-house blown off, the 11-inch NH 59269 gun disabled, smoke-stack riddled (Figure 11).

Other ironclads were similarly damaged and the Union fleet was ordered to retire. The crews anticipated quick repairs and orders to renew the assault. But the Passaic and its sister ironclads remained at anchor. Holden became concerned for the health of the crew:

Five days we lay thus, our discomfort growing almost unbearable. The turret was necessarily kept raised for action, and the sea constantly breaking over the decks, a constant stream of water was poured underneath it upon the blower belts, thus almost stopping the blowers and our supply of air, added to this, the hatches were necessarily kept down, and the tracking of grease down below, the darkness, the intensely foul air from the congregation of eighty men into so narrow a space, and the rolling of the ship, could not fail to enervate and sicken the healthiest crew.25

The attack on Charleston Harbor was not renewed; a massed assault by ironclads would not be attempted again in the course of the Civil War. Holden’s published account

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 12 The double-ended wooden sidwheel describes a “fair and pleasant trip” aboard the Passaic to New guboat USS Sassacus. York with plans to return south to participate in a renewed catalogs.marinersmuseum.org/object/CL20589 attack at some future date. In fact, the Passaic medical log tells a different story; he did not go north with the Passaic. On April 14, a new handwriting appeared in the medical log: “April 14, Port Royal—Doctor Holden was condemned by Board of Medical Survey and ordered north for medical treatment. Acting Asst. Surgeon A.S. Crampton ordered to Passaic for temporary duty, Port Royal, April 18, 1863.”26 The captain’s log confirms that a “tug came alongside and took the Doctor, who is detached.”27 Holden’s ironclad days were over.

USS SASSACUS Following his recovery from dysentery and the hardships of ironclad service, Holden was assigned to temporary duty on a naval rendezvous ship in New York Harbor and from there to the naval hospital in New York. In August 1863, he was ordered to the USS Sassacus, a double-ended wooden sidewheel gunboat (Figure 12).28 Holden’s lively account of life aboard the Sassacus was published in 1864 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.29 The Sassacus departed Washington on December 3, 1863, headed for New Orleans with an ironclad in tow. Early in the cruise, “there came a crash, a heavy lurch, a shiver of the whole ship,” as a sailing brig coming out of nowhere, sheared off the wheel- house of the Sassacus. The towed ironclad took evasive action and merely grazed the Sassacus. Hearing cries for help from the dark waters, the Sassacus’ sailing master, along with the surgeon (Holden wrote in the third person, but was undoubtedly “the surgeon”), manned a small boat in search of survivors, though several men from the brig were lost. Back aboard the Sassacus, Holden tended to the wounded. Following repairs at the Washington Navy Yard, the

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 Sassacus sailed on January 28, 1864, headed for North Carolina’s Cape Lookout Shoals to hunt Confederate blockade runners. The Sassacus was then ordered to the “sounds of North Carolina, and, as the events proved, to battle.”30 Holden faced one more epic naval battle. His report of the clash between the Sassacus and the CSS Albemarle appeared in Century Magazine in 1888 and, in slightly modified form, in the four-volume multi-author Battles and Leaders of the Civil War published by the Century Company between 1884 and 1888.31Even before its completion, the CSS Albemarle, with a double layer of two-inch iron plates and heavily armed, enjoyed a mythic reputation as the second Merrimac. The iron-encased prow, designed to “ram” enemy vessels, was fashioned from solid oak. Holden’s published description of the clash between the Albemarle and the Sassacus in Albemarle Sound near the Outer Banks of North Carolina on May 5, 1864, is simultaneously technical and thrilling. The Sassacus, anticipating an encounter with the Albemarle, had been fitted with a three-ton bronze “beak” to reinforce her bow. (Figure 13) As vessels on both sides commenced fire, Lieutenant Commander F.A. Roe, FIGURE 13 captain of the Sassacus, acted boldly to turn the tables on the The ironclad CSS Albemarle. wikipedia.org Albemarle by using his own not-very-formidable ship as a ram (Figure 14, next page). Holden, from his station “in the bow, on the main-deck, on a line with the enemy’s guns,” recalled the moment:

Straight as an arrow we shot forward to the designated spot [on the port side of the Albemarle]. Then came the order, “All hands lie down!” and with a crash that shook the ship like an earthquake, we struck full and square on the iron hull, careening it over and tearing away our own bows, ripping and straining timbers at the waterline.

The Albemarle, though damaged, fired point blank at the Sassacus, wreaking havoc among the crew. Holden continued:

Through the starboard shutter, which had been partly jarred off by the concussion, I saw the port of the ram not ten feet away. It opened, and like a flash of lightning I saw the grim muzzle of a cannon, the gun’s crew naked to the waist and blackened with powder; then a blaze a roar and the rush of the shell as it crashed through,

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 14 "The Sassacus and the Albemarle," whirling me round and dashing me to the deck. showing the sidewheeler Sassacus . . . [A] second shot from a Brooke gun almost ramming the metal-plated "ram" CSS touching our side crashed through, followed Albemarle. immediately by a cloud of steam and boiling Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 5916 water that filled the forward decks as our overcharged boilers, pierced by the shot, emptied their contents with a shrill scream that drowned for an instant the roar of the guns. The shouts of command and the cries of scalded, wounded, and blinded men mingled with the rattle of small- arms that told of a hand-to-hand conflict above.32

Holden described in vivid detail the “cries of agony from the scalded and frantic men.” On the day following the battle, a terse official report from the Sassacus, signed by Acting Surgeon Holden, recorded the following casualties “arising on board this ship from the engagement.” Of twenty wounded or scalded, five died, and five others were seriously scalded and in danger of dying. We can only imagine the grim scene in sickbay in the hours following the battle, as Holden, with little more than opium preparations to relieve pain, tried to ease the suffering of thirteen firemen, engineers, and coal heavers with critical burns and injuries. Seven others of varying ranks and posts were less seriously wounded and scalded.33 The iron-plated Albemarle retreated to the Roanoke River and was destroyed in late October in a daring commando night raid. The crippled Sassacus, following hasty repairs, remained in the North Carolina sounds for six weeks in support of Union- held eastern North Carolina. In late June, steaming stern-first to spare her damaged bow, she joined the Union fleet in the James River. Holden was put in charge of the medical department of the James River squadron. Although there were no major naval battles in the James River, the number of men, vessels, and ships’ surgeons under Holden’s medical oversight

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 15 "Officers of the 'Ward' U.S.A. General was impressive. He was also assigned to shore duty at the Hospital, Newark, N.J." Holden, in siege of Petersburg (1864), making “frequent visits to the civilian clothes and appearing very battle-fields.”34 gaunt, is almost certainly the bearded The Sassacus remained on James River Squadron duty, physicians seated in the front row, far left. despite extensive unrepaired damages, until the end of National Library of Medicine, Images in the September 1864, when the new captain, Commander John L. History of Medicine Davis, reported to the Secretary of the Navy that his ship had arrived at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.35 Following repairs, Sassacus returned to action with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron for the duration of the war. But Acting Assistant Surgeon Edgar Holden was no longer aboard. He had left the Sassacus and resigned from the Union Navy, returning to Newark in October 1864.

RESIGNATION The reasons given for Holden’s resignation from the Navy in late 1864 are somewhat unclear, although no-one could deny that he had done his duty and more. On October 10, 1864, Holden wrote to the Secretary of the Navy from the Sassacus, docked at Philadelphia: “Sir: I have the honor to tender my resignation as an Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Navy owing to urgent and peculiar demand for my professional care in my family. Very respectfully Your Obt. Servt. Edgar Holden, Asst. Surg.” The request was forwarded and approved. On October 11, 1864, William Whelan, chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, responded in a handwritten note: “Mrs.

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 Holden’s health disqualifies him for service [illegible] Navy.”36 Holden had married Katharine Hedden of East Orange, New Jersey, while he was still a house physician in Brooklyn in the months prior to the outbreak of war. It is possible that Katharine was ill with tuberculosis, the probable cause of her death in 1870 at age 33.37 As of January 1864, Holden had logged sixteen months at sea, four months on shore or other duty, and seven months “unemployed.”38 The latter designation included home leaves and periods of incapacity from illness. By the time of his resignation in October 1864, another ten full months of service, at least half of this time at sea, was added to his war record. Holden must have taken a month or two after his resignation from the Navy in October 1864 to attend to family or personal health problems. His younger brother, Henri, who left Princeton to join the Army, had died of tuberculosis in 1863. As the sole surviving son with aging parents, three sisters, a two-year-old daughter, and a pregnant (and possibly ill) wife, Holden would have had pressing family obligations in Newark. Although he had done his duty to the Union as a naval surgeon, Holden signed on as an acting assistant surgeon at the Ward United States Army Hospital in Newark, and served there until the hospital was decommissioned in September 186539 (Figure 15, previous page). “An Inquiry into the Causes of Certain Diseases on Ships of War,” his first medical publication, appeared in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1866.40

POST-WAR CAREER Holden built a distinguished multi-faceted postwar career FIGURE 16 (Figure 16). As medical director of Newark’s Mutual Benefit Life Studio portrait of Holden during his Insurance Company, he established guidelines for the active years of practice in Newark, company’s nationwide examining force of local physicians and ca 1870s. analyzed patterns of disease (particularly tuberculosis) based New Jersey Historical Society on company statistics. In addition to general medical and surgical practice, Holden was a respected consultant in circulatory disorders and tuberculosis of the lungs. He did extensive experiments on a device called the sphygmograph, a forerunner of the modern blood pressure apparatus. In all these fields, Holden published frequently in the state and national medical literature. A happy second marriage and pleasant family life enriched Holden’s postwar decades (Figure 17, next page). His spare hours were occupied by modest literary efforts (some published privately) and family musical evenings in which he played the flute. He had some skill at art, and enjoyed sketching

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 FIGURE 17 Holden family, summer 1908, at their trips to Morris County and the Jersey shore (Figures 18, 19, country home in Chatham, N.J. next two pages).41 After some years of poor health, Holden died Holden’s second wife, Helen, is suddenly in 1909 of heart disease at the family’s summer home holding a grandaughter. The young in Chatham. man in the foreground is son-in-law James Brown Burnett, Jr., the baby’s father. William B. Birdsall family collection

Dr. Sandra Moss is a retired internist who served as president of the Medical History Society of New Jersey and president of the American Osler Society, an international organization for clinician historians. She has published and spoken extensively about New Jersey's medical history.

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 ENDNOTES 1. William B. Birdsall, Joan Smith, and J. Bruce Burnett, descendants of Edgar Holden, kindly shared their family records and personal research. For a detailed history of Holden’s personal and family life, education, military career, and medical life, see Sandra W. Moss, Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark, New Jersey: Provincial Physician on a National Stage (XLibris, 2014). I am indebted to Holden’s great grandson, William B. Birdsall, for permission to use original images from his family collection. 2. In 1861, Pingry founded the Pingry School in Elizabeth, New Jersey. 3. “John Stillwell Schanck, M.D., LL.D., Class of 1840,” Princeton University Bulletin 10 (1898): 17–18. 4. Alumni Records, Princeton University Archives. 5. James J. Walsh, History of Medicine in New York: Three Centuries of Medical Progress (New York: National Americana Society, 1919), 2:428. 6. The almshouse hospital later matured into Kings County Hospital. 7. Thomas Turner, “Annual Report of the Resident Physician of Kings County Hospital,” in Annual Report of the Superintendents of the Poor of Kings County, for the Year Ending July 31, 1861 (Brooklyn, Daily Eagle Print, 1861), 51–53. 8. J. Henry Clark, “The First Fifty Years of the District Medical Society of Essex County,” Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey (1867): 77–181 (Civil War records, 143–76). 9. Frank R. Freemon, Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War, (Madison NJ: Associated University Presses, c1998), 92–93. 10. “Surgeons for the Navy,” New York Times, October 9, 1861. 11. National Archives and Record Administration, Records of Officers, M330, Roll 9, 1164. 12. Edgar Holden, “The Merrimac & Monitor from the Frigate Minnesota,” J. Bruce Burnett family papers. Holden used the spelling Merrimac. The deck on a fighting ship going into action was covered with sand to absorb blood and prevent the gunners from slipping as they moved about the deck and operated the cannons. 13. S. Dana Greene, “In the ‘Monitor’ Turret,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, ed. Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (New York: Century Co., 1887), 1:719–29; A. Mindell, Iron Coffin: War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 65–68. 14. Clark, “First Fifty Years, 166. 15. Gideon Welles to Edgar Holden, October 11, 1862, US Steamer Passaic Records, 1862–1866, Mss Collection 3064, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library. 16. “Passaic,” Medical Journals of Ships, 1813–1910, Medical Records and Reports on Patients, Headquarters Records, Records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, RG 52, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington. 17. Mindell, War, Technology, and Experience, 62. 18. Edgar Holden, “The First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” Harper’s FIGURE 18 New Monthly Magazine 27 (October 1863): 577–95. "Abandoned Furnace, Morris County, 19. Holden, “First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” 578. N.J.," sketch by Holden, 1882. 20. “General Muster Book, U.S.S. Iron Clad Steamer Passaic,” September 1862–October 1863, U.S. Steamer Passaic Records, 1862–1866, MssCol 3064, New York Public William B. Birdsall family collection Library. 21. Holden, “First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” 580; William F. Keeler to Ann Keeler, December 25, 1862, in William F. Keeler, Aboard the USS Monitor: 1862, The Letters of William Frederick Keeler, U.S. Navy, ed. R.W. Daly (Annapolis MD: United States Naval Institute, 1964), 251. 22. Holden, “First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” 581–83. 23. Passaic, Medical Journals of Ships, 1813–1910, Box 155, Port Royal SC, 1862–1865, Medical Journals and Reports on Patients, Headquarters Records, Records of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, RG 52, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington. 24. Passaic, Medical Journals of Ships, 1813–1910. Tincture of opium was an effective antidiarrheal medication. 25. Holden, “First Cruise of the ‘Monitor’ Passaic,” 594–95. 26. Passaic, Medical Journals of Ships, April 14, 1863. 27. Passaic 11/25/62–5/12/63,” Logs of U.S. Naval Ships, 1801–1915, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, RG 24, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington.

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020 28. Records of Officers, Old Military and Civil Records, Textual Archives Services Division, M330, Roll 9, #1164, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington. 29. Edgar Holden, “A Cruise on the Sassacus,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 29 (November 1864): 712–24. 30. Holden, “A Cruise on the Sassacus,” 724. 31. Edgar Holden, “The ‘Albemarle’ and the ‘Sassacus’: An Attempt to Run Down the Iron- Clad with a Wooden Ship,” Century Magazine 36 (1888): 427–32. Edgar Holden, “The ‘Albemarle’ and the ‘Sassacus,’” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War IV (New York: Century Company, 1888), 628–33. 32. Holden, “The ‘Albemarle’ and the ‘Sassacus,’” 429–30. 33. Edgar Holden to Lt. Cmdr. F. A. Roe, 6 May 1864, in United States Naval War Records Office, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (ORUCNWR) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894–1922), 9:742–43. 34. “Holden, Edgar,” in National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White & Co., 1916), 15:92; “The Medical Profession of Essex County,” in History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey, comp. William H. Shaw (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1884), 1:321–22. 35. Cmdr. John L. Davis to Gideon Welles, September 26, 1864, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (ORUCNWR) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894–1922), 10:484. 36. Joan Lowell Smith, family papers. 37. Moss, Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark, New Jersey, 423. 38. Register of the Commissioned, Warrant, and Volunteer Officers of the Navy of the United States to January 1, 1864 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1864), 48–49. 39. For a history of the Ward Hospital, see Sandra W. Moss, “To Treat War’s ‘Wounded and Diseased’: Newark’s Civil War Hospital,” New Jersey Heritage Magazine 2 (2003): 18–28. 40. Edgar Holden, “An Inquiry into the Causes of Certain Diseases on Ships of War,” American Journal of the Medical Sciences 51 (1866): 75–84. 41. William B. Birdsall, personal communication.

FIGURE 19 "A First Attempt at Water Colors, Beach Haven, N.J.," water color painting by Holden, 1878. William B. Birdsall family collection

Ironclad Surgeon | Sandra W. Moss, M.D., M.A. | www.GardenStateLegacy.com GSL 49 September 2020